So firstly, it's not big pharma's responsibility to research the virus, why would they sponsor anything. They are private businesses seeking to make a profit. Why would they waste money on something not profitable to them. That's not a conspiracy, that's capitalism. The pandemic is a national health problem, that's the government's responsibility. It's the government's job to take charge and pursue that kind of research.
I never said that it was proven that hydroxychloroquine doesn't help covid, read my words carefully. I said that there was no clear evidence from any of the studies that have been done that it helped treat the virus. This is why I explained about how science is all evidence and assumptions, no absolutes. The original evidence showed it worked, the assumption was it was a cure. But the study had limited patients that were statistically likely to recover anyway. There was good reason to believe that the evidence they had was not enough to make the assumption that they did. So a larger study was done and the new evidence showed it wasn't statistically significant, so we have made the new assumption that the original assumption of a cure was wrong. But again, assumption. Maybe another study will come out with a new methodology to show there is a way to to make the drug work. None of these studies are wrong, they are what they are. It's just more and more evidence that we use to try and build assumptions that best match up with it all.
This is how you have to think about science, which is why I spent some paragraphs talking about it. It's a different way of thinking about things that people without a science background are just not used to. Full of grey areas and vague answers.
So what about zinc and hydroxychloroquine, well of course we should study it, and there are studies happening right now. These will be more pieces of evidence that build a bigger picture and we'll use that along with all the other evidence to make new assumptions. But be careful about making assumptions and then working backwards to make the evidence fit. That can be a case of bias. The evidence you posted is quite vague, it doesn't really support your overall assumption. What you have is a theory. And when we have a theory we do a study to find evidence and see what happens. But until we get that evidence we can't jump to conclusions. This isn't anything dodgy, this is just the scientific due process. You're getting ahead of things, we need to see the evidence first. Theory, study, evidence, assumptions. In that order. It's slow and annoying but that's how it has to be done.
You might be thinking, so why is it taking so long to study zinc and hydroxychloroquine, it's so obvious! But think about it. There are HEAPS of drugs with anti-viral properties out there. What about them? And if they don't work on their own, what about we combine them? There's practically unlimited combinations of drugs we can experiment with! You could make a strong case for MILLIONS of combinations. Studies are complicated, slow and expensive. They have to make choices somewhere down the line. We don't know why researchers have focused on what they have with their limited resources. I'm sure their reasoning can fill research papers on there own. Science isn't elegant or fast or neat. It's a big complicated mess that just slowly but surely builds up evidence piece by piece until we can do something useful with the assumptions we can make.
As for vitamin D, nothing there changes what I said. Healthier people do better. There is a theory you could make, whether giving an increased dose to patients who have the virus meaningfully helps their recovery or survival rate. Maybe testing has already been done, I dunno. Why aren't hospitals already giving it to people? Because we don't know for sure. Hospitals are for real, verified treatments, not testing (unless they are explicitly conducting a scientific test of course). If you give the patient everything that MIGHT work they'll be swallowing pills all day. So where do you draw the line? Well, you do a study. And now we've come full circle. "It might work" is just not practical for a hospital to spend their limited time and resources on, they need certainty. But of course you the individual can take these over the counter supplements yourself, and there are many articles suggesting just that.
The chart isn't just showing a falling mortality rate, we are doing significantly more testing now. Mortality rate has improved though, but that isn't because they are curing the virus. It's because they are getting better at treating the symptoms of the virus and keeping it from killing people. Very different things. An article you can read here:
https://www.ft.com/content/961c90e7-ed48-4802-8d61-8513a0460916 Just small improvements to keep people alive while they run the course of the infection. There's more to hospital care than just drugs.
As for me, I'm educated in biotech, but I pursued a career elsewhere for the money. Now I'm investing (with that money I made) and it's not surprising that I like biotech companies the most. I'm no science expert but I do understand and speak the language.
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